Author
Topic: Multiple M/D playing same thing (Read 894 times)

So I spent a while trying to figure out how to do this, and once I did, I was disappoint.

So lets start by saying, once you know how to do this, it is really easy. Let's start by saying I am working on my server as a test before I finish my house. I have a 2.2ghz opteron proc with a biostart mobo as the server. Running 1.5g of ram. It is running a gigabit networking card and has a 16 port smc gigabit switch. My media director is a amd athlon xp 2000+, on an abit at7 max2 board with 756mb ram and no hdd. With ease i got it setup, but the remote (a xp-mce remote) needed a little work to get up and running.

Now, I started to play a cd on my media director and wanted to test it so both played it because eventually I want to be able to have 3-5 rooms playing the same item. It is an mp3 rip of the cd at 128kbps. When I set it so my server was playing the file also, it immediately jumped 1.5mins into the track. I felt, wow, kinda odd. So I selected another track, which did not start at the beginning, but instead started 2 mins into the track. Same if I started a new cd and did it again. Now, if you try to switch cds while in multiple room configuration, it overrides it until you stop the music and start something new. At which point you have to resync the media directors.

So on to the next problem with this. The media directors can be anywhere from 2 seconds apart to about 30 seconds apart in the same song. If you are throwing a party, this wouldn't really work. Unfortionately, this was one of the main reasons for my wanting Linuxmce. Have a media director in the basement, one in the living room, and one outside and have the server control the hallways and have them all playing the same music. Doesn't seem like it will work. Any ideas, or is this out of the realm of LinuxMCE.

Playback across multiple media directors is supposed to work. However, i remember seeing a bug report in mantis about this, so apparently it is broken at this time (though being in mantis, i'm sure it will be fixed soon)

So I spent a while trying to figure out how to do this, and once I did, I was disappoint.

So lets start by saying, once you know how to do this, it is really easy. Let's start by saying I am working on my server as a test before I finish my house. I have a 2.2ghz opteron proc with a biostart mobo as the server. Running 1.5g of ram. It is running a gigabit networking card and has a 16 port smc gigabit switch. My media director is a amd athlon xp 2000+, on an abit at7 max2 board with 756mb ram and no hdd. With ease i got it setup, but the remote (a xp-mce remote) needed a little work to get up and running.

Now, I started to play a cd on my media director and wanted to test it so both played it because eventually I want to be able to have 3-5 rooms playing the same item. It is an mp3 rip of the cd at 128kbps. When I set it so my server was playing the file also, it immediately jumped 1.5mins into the track. I felt, wow, kinda odd. So I selected another track, which did not start at the beginning, but instead started 2 mins into the track. Same if I started a new cd and did it again. Now, if you try to switch cds while in multiple room configuration, it overrides it until you stop the music and start something new. At which point you have to resync the media directors.

So on to the next problem with this. The media directors can be anywhere from 2 seconds apart to about 30 seconds apart in the same song. If you are throwing a party, this wouldn't really work. Unfortionately, this was one of the main reasons for my wanting Linuxmce. Have a media director in the basement, one in the living room, and one outside and have the server control the hallways and have them all playing the same music. Doesn't seem like it will work. Any ideas, or is this out of the realm of LinuxMCE.

Hi i guess your running Beta4 so multi-room synchronised playback of audio or ripped DVD's should work fine... with a couple of limitations;

- Currently its best if the first machine you start playing your media on is not part of the set of MD's that you are listening too as this avoids some slight playback timing errors.

So do the following to kick off multi-room;

- Start some ripped media playing on your Core using the Orbiter. Make sure its playing ok locally at the Core.- Make sure all the MD's you want to join multi-room playback are booted and have audio out working.- On your Core's Orbiter selected the Media Floorplan (you should see a floorplan or a list of MD's on the left and a single piece of media listed in the media list on the right (we started it playing in step one... right?)- Now click on each of the MD's that will join multi-room playback (they must be on and booted ;-) ) in turn adding them to the playback group.- Now with all your playback MD's selected click once on the Media you have listed in the currently playing Media list- All you selected MD's should now be playing your media- Do next track or next chapter and they will all change in synchro !